{"id":14606,"date":"2012-01-17T14:37:41","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T19:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=14606"},"modified":"2012-02-02T15:53:49","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T20:53:49","slug":"physics-department-remembers-anniversary-of-its-groundbreaking-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2012\/01\/physics-department-remembers-anniversary-of-its-groundbreaking-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Physics department remembers anniversary of its groundbreaking discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bozidar

Bozidar Mitrovic, left, and Fereidoon Razavi joined forces with the late Frans Koffyberg to be the first in Canada to prove the existence of high-Tc superconductors.<\/p><\/div>\n

It was one of the biggest advancements in physics in years, and Brock was a part of it.<\/p>\n

The high-Tc superconductor – which is composed of a compound of the metals barium, lanthanum, copper andoxygen \u2013 meant that energy could be conducted in a faster, easier and less expensive way than it had previously. Twenty-five years ago, its existence was postulated in a paper published by Swiss researchers from IBM’s Zurich laboratory who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.<\/p>\n

But Brock researchers were the first in Canada, and the second in the world, to prove that it worked.<\/p>\n

\"Mitrovic,

Mitrovic, Razavi and Koffyberg in 1986<\/p><\/div>\n

More than two decades later, Professors Fereidoon Razavi<\/a> and Bozidar Mitrovic<\/a>, who still work at Brock, remember the discovery well. They did it alongside Professor Frans Koffyberg, who had attracted the funding and equipment required to do the research. Razavi encountered the Swiss article in the James A. Gibson Library in early December. The trio knew that the rest of the physics world would be racing to produce a superconductor.<\/p>\n

They worked through the Christmas break of 1986-87, shivering in the closed university in a rush to produce and publish. They submitted their paper to the prestigious journal Physical Review<\/em> hours after the IBM team. Their work was groundbreaking enough that it was not only published in the journal, but cited in the Nobel Prize lecture. It was a pivotal moment for the young Physics department of a 23-year-old university.<\/p>\n

High-Tc superconductors are widely used today, such as in the powerful magnets of Magnetic Resonance Imagers (MRIs), or in the electrical distribution systems inside nuclear-powered submarines. Such flexibility in application was difficult to achieve for traditional superconducting wires, made from brittle metal alloys that must be cooled to 20 degrees absolute (-253 degrees Centigrade or -423 degrees Fahrenheit) using helium, which is costly and difficult to handle. High-Tc superconductors solve this problem. In the Physics lab, the professors produced a metallic compound that put the Swiss theory into action.<\/p>\n

The professors look back fondly on the discovery and the rush of inspiration it brought. When Mitrovic, a Yugoslavian-born scientist, was a post-doctoral researcher at Stony Brook University on Long Island, a professor advised him \u201cWhen someone shows you interesting results, be prepared to drop whatever you\u2019re doing.\u201d Mitrovic now dispenses the same advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a feeling you can contribute,\u201d Mitrovic said, \u201cit\u2019s important to set aside what you\u2019re doing and do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The late Koffyberg, a Brock professor from to 1965 to 1993, felt the same way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have something this hot, you drop everything,\u201d he said in a 1987 media release.<\/p>\n

Mitrovic, who joined Brock in 1983, continues to research superconductivity and teaches astronomy and quantum mechanics. He won a Faculty Award for Excellence in teaching<\/a> at the Spring 2011 Convocation. Razavi, a Tehran-born scientist, received government funding in 2010<\/a> for \u201cThe Physical Property Management System for research on electronic and magnetic properties of materials and thin films of compounds.\u201d He teaches electromagnetism, experimental physics and condensed matter physics.<\/p>\n

Their contribution is worth commemorating, said Ed Sternin, chair of Physics<\/a>. It was one of the first papers produced by Brock researchers that had a worldwide impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the words of Professor Mitrovic, it is rare that one comes so close to the frontier of science,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m proud that it happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was one of the biggest advancements in physics in years, and Brock was a part of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1,5],"tags":[3328,81,3325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14606"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14965,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14606\/revisions\/14965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}